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Laramide Resources finds gold at Queensland uranium project

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – TSX-listed Laramide Resources, which is developing the Westmoreland uranium project, located in Australia’s north-west Queensland, on Wednesday said the results of 13 diamond drill holes continued to “show promise” to increase the overall size of the resource, and some had been found to contain gold.

"The results continue to confirm the technical merits of Westmoreland," VP for exploration Peter Mullens said.

The company said the new mineralisation east of the new dyke continued to show promise with a substantial intercept of 34 m at 1 467 parts per million (ppm) triuranium octoxide (U3O8) including 10 m at 3 965 ppm U3O8.

“The initial results in the Huarabagoo deposit area show excellent potential to increase the overall size of the resource, in addition to further confirming the continuity and grade of mineralisation in this part of the project," Mullens stated.

He also pointed out that of particular note is drill hole WDD12-167, which intersected a number of gold-bearing intervals, including 2 m at 6.1 g/t gold from 33 m, and 4 m at 30.9 g/t gold from 55 m.

"It has always been known that the Huarabagoo mineralisation carries good gold grades but Laramide has not understood the extent of this mineralisation and whether it will be commercially viable. Much of the historic drilling was not assayed for gold. Future work will focus on trying to establish a gold resource here, in addition to uranium,” Mullens said.

The company reported results from 13 diamond drill holes comprising 1 776.9 m from the 2012 programme. Ten drill holes were drilled in the northern section of the Huarabagoo deposit area, and three were drilled on a single section along the structural corridor that connects the Huarabagoo and Junnagunna deposits. Drilling has been completed for this stage with a total of 30 diamond drill holes for 4 118 m.

In a November 2012 interview, Laramide CEO Marc Henderson told Mining Weekly Online Laramide Resources saw big potential in Australia’s uranium sector after a decades-long ban on mining the radioactive metal in Queensland was lifted in October 2012.

Henderson said it was now not a question of “if” the company’s flagship Westmoreland project would be constructed, but only a question of “when”.

“The Westmoreland project is one of the few projects that would ‘go’, even if the uranium price remains at about $60/lb,” Henderson said.

Laramide’s stock traded 2.25% higher on the TSX at 91 Canadian cents apiece on Wednesday morning.